The Yankees’ crusade over the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, and other sign-stealing endeavors, may be coming back around on them, as an appeals court has ruled that a letter that allegedly proves MLB hid a Yankees sign-stealing situation should indeed be unsealed.
The news was first broken by Brendan Kuty of NJ.com late Monday morning, who later reported that the unsealing could take up to two weeks, and is subject to minor redactions.
The Yankees were fined for improperly using a dugout phone in 2017, and Yankees team President Randy Levine argued in Dec. 2020 that the letter to be unsealed, which which was written by Commissioner Rob Manfred to Yankees GM Brian Cashman, was actually about the Red Sox using an Apple Watch to illegally relay signals to players.
Levine’s argument came shortly after U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled the letter should be unsealed because much of it had been acknowledged by MLB, but Levine argued releasing the content would breach privacy, as other letters filed as confidential in the suit weren’t being released, and would harm the Yankees' reputation.
Unfortunately, on Monday, Judge Debra Ann Livingston U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overruled the notion of Levine’s argument.
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“In light of plaintiffs’ attempted use of the letter in their proposed Second Amended Complaint and the district court’s discussion of the letter in explaining its decision to deny plaintiffs’ request for leave to amend in their reconsideration motion, and because MLB disclosed a substantial portion of the substance of the letter in its press release about the investigation, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in unsealing the letter, subject to redacting the names of certain individuals,” Livingston wrote on Levine's claim of privacy breach.
On the argument of reputation, Livingston further opined that "the
argument carries little weight. Disclosure of the document will allow the public to independently assess MLB’s conclusion regarding the internal investigation (as articulated to the Yankees), and the Yankees are fully capable of disseminating their own views regarding the actual content of the Yankees Letter. In short, any purported distortions regarding the content of the Yankees Letter can be remedied by the widespread availability of the actual content of this judicial document to the public, and the corresponding ability of MLB and the Yankees to publicly comment on it.”
In addition, the court upheld the April 2020 dismissal of a $5 million class-action suit filed against MLB, the Astros, and the Red Sox, in which lead plaintiff Kristopher Olson alleged that the three entities were liable for money lost by bettors on DraftKings – the official authorized gaming operator of MLB – because of the two teams’ alleged cheating.
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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